12 4. Budget of 19204921.

The revenue for the year 1920-21 is estimated at £E, 40,271,000, and the cjxpenditure at the same sum. Of the anticipated revenue, £E. 33,701,000 may be •classed as ordinary and £E. 6,570,000 as extraordinary receipts, the latter including £E. 2,770,000 from the sale of land, £E, 1,800,000 from the profits on the control of cotton, and £E. 2,000,000 from the new tax on cotton. Of the anticipated expenditure £E. 31,594,418 may be classed as ordinary and £E. 8,676,582 as extraordinary expenditure. £E. 5,654,080 of the latter sum is set aside for new works, and tfc remaining £E. 3,022,502 includes £E. 2,000,000 to cover the estimated loss on the sale of imported wheat, and £E. 954,502 carried forward from the credit of £E. 1,000,000 opened in the Budget of the previous year to provide for the settlement of claims arising out of the disorders of last spring.

Direct taxes, the only source of revenue which is estimated to show a decrease, are expected to produce £E. 5,480,000, or £E. 92,000 less than the estimate for the previous year, a decrease which is more than accounted for by the abolition of the tax on date-palms. The Financial Adviser in his note on the budget comments as follows upon this wise measure of the Egyptian Government;— “ The tax on date trees has been a subject of frequent criticism for many years past. The Legislative Assembly has more than once urged the Government to abolish it on the ground that as the land planted with date trees is already subject to the land tax, it is unjust that the trees themselves should pay an additional tax, particularly as other fruit trees are exempt. It was pointed out, moreover, that in most cases the owners of the date trees are not owners of the land, and belong, as a rule, to the poorer class of the agricultural population. At the time of the reassessment of the land tax, the fact that land was planted with date trees was taken into account, but no doubt it was difficult to make an appreciable difierence in the assessment of the land according to the number of trees per feddan that it carried. Having regard to the objections to which the tax is open, and to the fact that no census of date trees having been carried out since the year 1907, a very large number of taxable trees now escape the duty, the Government has decided to abolish it from the 1st April, 1920, entailing a loss of revenue of £E. 136,500.”

Customs receipts will, it is anticipated, increase by no less than £E. 3,633,000, and provide £E. 10,590,000. Import duties are expected to increase by £E. 1,290,000 and tobacco duties by £E. 1,650,000, while export duties and quay dues are expected to account in almost equal proportions for an increase of £E. 1,100,000. From these must be deducted the sum of £E. 407,000, a loss arising from the abolition of the sugar excise. The proceeds of Government investments are expected to exceed the estimate for the previous year by £E. 1,232,000, while among other augmentations of revenue, the receipts of the railways show an estimated rise of £E. 636,000, and those of the State Domains, owing principally to the higher price of cotton, a rise of'£E. 480,000.

“ The detailed mode of imposition of the new cotton tax,” the Financial Adviser writes in his note on the IBudget, “ which is held by the legal advisers of the Government not to be of a character which requires submission to the Legislative Assembly under article 17 of the Organic Law, will in due course be determined by decree. It was announced at the beginning of the year in order to permit of its being taken into account by those already then, making contracts for November deliveries of the new crop.” With respect to the revenue of £E. 2,770,000, which is expected to accrue from sales of Government land, he points out that the whole of this receipt will be more than compensated by expenditure of a character calculated permanently to improve the nation’s property, whether by irrigation or other new works.

The revenue will so receive a considerable accretion from the profits on the operations of the Cotton Control Commission, a body set up in 1918 to carry out, on behalf of the British and Egyptian Governments, a scheme for the purchase of the cotton crop of that year. The price fixed for the purchase of the cotton was on the basis of 42 dollars per kantar for “ fully good fair Sakellarides ” delivered in Alexandria. The final result of the operations will show a considerable profit, the Commission having preserved throughout a margin wide enough to cover, not merely expenses, but also a provision for contingencies.

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